Holiday Time

It's holiday time! I know many of my millions of readers are spending their precious days off with family and friends - unless they're Hungarians.
I don't have much of a family except for my brother Homer who's still hiding in that cave outside of town. Our town of Angus Hat doesn't do much for this time of the year since most people go away to visit relatives and everyone else can't really leave their houses. Angus Hat Saskatchewan boasts the largest per capita population of invalids in all of Canada. What's interesting is that ninety two percent of them are invalid by choice. Needless to say, it gets pretty dull around here when we should actually be celebrating. Xmas was uneventful apart from the forest fire east of town and the bus plunge off the Baconbelt bridge. New Year's eve is coming up and I was wondering what to do to make the start of a new decade special.
The boys came over earlier and suggested we all go on a holiday trip - to Santa's Village!
Oddly enough, Santa's Village is closed during the twelve days of Xmas. I suppose it's because old Santa has to deliver all those goodies to anxious children, who live in stark terror of not getting what they really want for Xmas. The story goes that Santa and his elves make toys and small appliances in a pretty little village covered in a neat blanket of pure white snow. I thought this all took place at the North Pole but his eponymous village is just north of here in the Northwest Territories!
My pal Pearly claims to have been there and he proceeded to describe this magical kingdom:
His trip to Santa's Village began typically enough; Pearly wandered away from a campground on the east shore of Great Bear Lake and meandered around the tundra and brush for about a month, living off wild berries, shrew meat and barnacles until he came upon a quaint Tyrolian style village!
There were all kinds of little people going to and fro. There were loads of boxes being taken from house to house by little carts pulled by reindeer, which seemed to be the preferred mode of transport. Carts also carried lots of little people down the street as well. Upon closer inspection, Pearly noticed that the Elves were actually small children! He jumped back into the badger hole he had dug up to the outskirts of town and stayed out of sight until dark.
Pearly had taken on the ways of the badger during his month on the Tundra. A female badger (he affectionately called her Leona) had saved his life when he was about to be overrun by a gang of ferocious marmots!
She showed him how to live off the land and how to stay warm on the cold nights. She already had three children but Pearly grew to love them and they, in turn, were happy to have a Daddy around the hole again. But back to our story!
Pearly crawled around the village after dark and came upon a huge home where all the lights were on. As he looked through the window he noticed a long conveyor belt with the children he saw in the morning sitting on either side by the hundreds, assembling Barbie dolls, Transformers and Panini Presses. He looked up at what seemed to be a mezzanine overlooking the factory floor, and there, sitting on a throne of baby seal skin, elephant ivory tusks and gold was Santa himself!
Pearly later found out that "Santa Claus" was actually Santorino Clozzo, a Calabresian toy maker who arrived in Manitoba in eighteen eighty five looking to make his fortune.
He started out working for a novelty manufacturer in Winnipeg who specialized in souvenirs. He had a client in the Orient who sold miniature Pagodas to tourists visiting Shanghai and Peking - imagine, Chinese keepsakes made in Canada!
Clozzo dreamed of building a fantasy town for little children so that they could put aside the six day drudgery of working factory jobs and replace it with six days of pure pleasure - assembling toys!
Good fortune came Santorino's way one morning when news broke out about a group of bears mauling some tourists to death just north of Great Slave Lake. Property values sank like a concrete overshoe and Clozzo moved fast. He bought up one million hectares without even knowing what hectares means!
He managed to convince orphanages and school to send their kids to his "camp" where they would have fun assembling toys for twelve hours a day - which is where the term "elves" comes from, by the way.
Dame fortune smiled once again on Clozzo when he discovered that herds of caribou migrated right by his little town. He realized that the caribou looked a lot like reindeer and this meant he wouldn't have to import horses to move his products around.
It also meant a limitless supply of meat for the Elves!
He then began to fabricate the Xmas legend that would captivate children around the world - if your world was North America, England and Germany. He found distributors for his toys and appliances and instructed them to claim that these products came from the frozen north and they were made for little boys and girls by "Santo Clozzo, the friend of children". The name didn't catch and his costume of green leotard with black riding boots and a tyrolian feathered hat scared people. All seemed lost until Santorino discovered German Grand Opera. He was in Saskatoon for a performance of "der Ring das Neibelungen". During Seigfried he had a life changing experience! He was raised to believe that true heros ran from danger! He began reading Goethe and Nietche, which gave hime the idea for "Zara Thustra, friend of children"! this didn't work either but he realized that just "Germanicising" his name would improve his chances since everybody loved the Germans!
The rest, as they say, is history!
After becoming fabulously wealthy from his deal with the Coca Cola company he decided to make his village a tourist attraction so all the factories went underground and over them was built a beautiful replica of his home town in the Italian Alps.
Santa's Village is now run by Satorino Clozzo the Fourth who still dresses in the red suit of his great great grandfather and greets every child that comes to him with a hearty handshake. He then feels their biceps and checks their teeth to see how strong and healthy they are.It's a great place for families to visit, as long as they don't lose sight of their children. Pearly recommends that moms handcuff themselves to their toddlers.
Speaking of Pearly, he managed to scamper back into his badger hole before he was discovered. He lived with Leona for another seven years before he burrowed his way back to Angus Hat. For about ten years after, we'd find Pearly out on the ground at night digging for food. He lives in a basement to this day.
Anyway, we'll be too busy packing to enjoy our usual New Year's Eve celebration of Beer and Crepes.
Keep on travellin'!
Blitz